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| Memorandum to the Press 04.72 |
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Word Count: 1500
Wednesday,
13 October 2004
On October 4, Haitians staged yet another in the country’s growing number
of street demonstrations, calling for the return of democratically-elected
president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was ousted by a State Department-scripted
coup last February 29. In recent days, these manifestations have cost 30 lives
in the Port-au-Prince area alone, generating further popular anger against
the U.S.-sanctioned local authorities. The latest protest pitted the island’s
ill-trained police and Brazilian-led U.N. peacekeepers against pro-Aristide
supporters, resulting in fourteen dead, including three police officers. In
comments to the Miami Herald, Interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue blamed
the violence on “The Aristide loyalists [who] were trying to intimidate and
derail the municipal, legislative and presidential elections scheduled for
next year.”
Setting
the Scene
From Latortue’s first days in office, members of Aristide’s Lavalas Party—rather
than renegade ex-police and military personnel, and members of the previous
junta—were the interim president’s enemy. But in recent days, Latortue has
been stepping up his anti-Aristide rhetoric with the probable goal of building
a case against the participation of the former Haitian president and his party
in next year’s elections. There is no doubt that Latortue will soon be using
the perilous security situation to build support for reconstituting the brutal
Haitian armed forces. He will also use the situation to advance the electoral
prospects of Haiti’s business-led rightwing political movement, in particular
the Group of 184, led by the unscrupulous sweatshop labor king, Andy Apaid
Jr., a U.S. national.
Rather than this far-fetched explanation of the alleged threat posed by Aristide,
based on a ballot that might not happen (at least not by next year), Latortue
instead should have traced part of the blame for the recent series of public
protests to the gross incompetence that he and his government have displayed
ever since he was raised up from obscurity by a State Department press release
declaring the formation of his government. Latortue’s appointment was announced
shortly after Aristide had been hustled onto an airplane and flown into exile
in the Central African Republic.
Team
Members: Latortue and Powell
A recent example of Latortue’s ineptitude was his hapless response to Tropical
Storm Jeanne, the natural tragedy that took several thousand lives on the
island and cost tens of millions of dollars in personal and public property
loss. While the storm was raging, Latortue and his confederates were not even
competent enough to take the basic step of establishing an emergency national
radio grid over which they could have broadcast calls to the population to
go to high ground in order to escape from the flooding. This abdication of
responsibility alone should have been enough to justify calling for his and
his colleague’s resignations.
In addition to Latortue, Secretary of State Colin Powell was quick to blame
last week’s street violence on supporters of Aristide’s Lavalas Party, stating
that “These are the old Aristide elements and some criminal elements who are
trying to take advantage of the situation.” However, protesters present at
the demonstration claim that it was the police who first opened fire on a
crowd of, at that time, unarmed pro-Aristide militants.
What Powell refuses to acknowledge is that the recent violence and protests
in Haiti are not random acts, but are the direct result of popular resentment
against the U.S.-executed coup d’etat which he authored, and which brought
about the replacement of Aristide last February with someone whom the citizens
view as an impostor. Haitians are also outraged over the manner in which Latortue
has embraced rather than condemned the island’s ex-military and rebel police
who have persecuted thousands of Lavalas members, solely on the basis of their
political beliefs. In Latortue’s first public appearance as prime minister,
he went so far as to acclaim Haiti’s rebel leaders—many of whom are now highly
regarded by the current government for their gun-slinging abilities. He also
praised thugs and FRAPH paramilitary death squad members, whom he has since
referred to as “freedom fighters.” This even sent his State Department godfathers
into a free fall.
For
and Against Aristide
For their part, rather than protecting Aristide and the principles of the
constitutional government, U.S. Embassy officials, acting under the instructions
of Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega, with the approval of Powell,
skillfully stage-managed the removal of Aristide from the country. There was
no confusion over what Washington wanted; a number of inter-agency meetings
in Washington established that Noriega, hiding behind the phrase, “a high
State Department source,” had been lobbying to oust Aristide weeks before
the president’s eventual flight into exile.
The Bush administration’s strategy was to rid itself once and for all of that
meddlesome troublemaker, choosing to avail itself of Aristide’s desperate
situation, on the eve of his departure. Not only did Powell refuse to authorize
peacekeepers to be sent to protect Aristide and Port-au-Prince, but he would
not even authorize the shipment of tear gas and other riot control devices
necessary to preserve law and order and control the security situation. Consequently,
it should come as no surprise that the majority of Haitians today are alienated
by and deeply suspicious of Washington’s motives in imposing an unelected
government of its own choosing upon them. They also resent foreign troops
being brought in to maintain discipline over the population while a jerry-rigged
ballot is prepared, in which most likely neither Aristide nor his main political
allies will be allowed to take part.
Public protests are one of the few mechanisms at hand for the poor to voice
their discontent. Moreover, many Haitians are mystified over who Latortue
actually is, aside from being a long-time resident of Boca Raton, Florida,
and not having been a Haitian resident for decades. Most Haitians still consider
Aristide to be their only legitimate leader. Alix Jean, a Lavalas supporter,
captured the sentiment of many Haitians when he noted that, “We believe in
democracy, and we have a democratically elected leader. His name is Jean-Bertrand
Aristide.”
Friends
and Foes
Moreover, Haitians are not alone in their refusal to acquiesce to the U.S.
hybrid government. In spite of Washington’s pressure on the leadership of
Guyana, Dominica, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, as part of an
overall strategy to reintegrate the now U.S. satellite into CARICOM’s regional
trade bloc activities, these doughty mini-nations have refused to interact
with the Latortue government. At this point, CARICOM—although a number of
its members are in favor of lifting Haiti’s suspension—will not move to reintegrate
Latortue’s regime as a CARICOM member until the matter is brought up at its
next scheduled meeting. Why then did Powell expect fiercely nationalist Haitians
to meekly accept a U.S.-dependent government without displaying their fury
in one of the few methods still available to them—street demonstrations?
Why
They Protest
In fact, many patriotic Haitians consider it nothing less than their duty
to manifest their chagrin over the shrouded departure of their lawful president.
Despite the Bush administration’s ultimate responsibility for Haiti’s current
morass, Powell has joined Latortue in blaming Aristide supporters for the
turmoil that is increasingly gripping the small Caribbean nation. The record,
however, speaks differently. The Latortue government—and for that matter the
U.S.-installed and led emergency peacekeeping unit and then the current U.N.
interim peacekeepers— characteristically have stood idly by and watched as
a rising tide of pro-Aristide Haitians have been harassed, arrested, tortured
and, in many instances, killed for their political dissent and support of
Aristide. In a San Francisco Bay View article, Haitian expert Anthony Fenton
cited the July 19 publication of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in
Haiti in which it was reported that, “Morgue employees from the General Hospital
in Port-au-Prince have revealed that 800 bodies on Sunday, March 7, and another
200 bodies on Sunday, March 28, were dumped and buried in a mass grave at
Titanyen. These figures are unusual for such a short period of time (100 is
normal for a month).” The document continued to note that, “Interviewees have
reported that the victims were supporters of Aristide or Haiti’s former constitutional
government.”
Another example of the interim government’s single-minded persecution of Lavalas
supporters—much of it under the watch of one of Latortue’s most diabolical
cabinet figures, Justice Minister Bernard Gousse—was the detention of former
Prime Minister Yvon Neptune on July 27, 2004. After nearly three months in
hiding, Neptune was detained and imprisoned in the national penitentiary on
invented charges to ensure that he would not be able to participate in the
upcoming 2005 elections. “There’s no case against [Neptune],” charged U.S.
Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) in an interview with the Council on Hemispheric
Affairs. It was “unconscionable that he [Neptune] has been arrested—this is
another attempt by the puppet government to cut off the head of Lavalas.”
Amnesty International echoed Congresswoman Waters’ interpretation in a stinging
indictment of the Latortue government’s behavior last June. The organization
claimed that, “The interim government has swiftly moved to arrest members
of former President Aristide’s Lavalas Family Party suspected of acts of political
violence or corruption. However, the government has failed to act against
a number of convicted perpetrators of grave human rights violations who were
freed from prison before or during the recent insurgency… None of them have
been re-arrested, and a few are reportedly terrorizing their victims and others
involved in their prosecution.”
This
analysis was prepared by Jenna Michelle Liut and Larry Birns, respectively
COHA Research Associate and Director.
October
13, 2004
COHA
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